Martin Lewis issued a brutal criticism of Chancellor Rachel Reeves as he attacked one of her money-raising measures. The personal finance expert, founder of the Money Saving Expert website, said: "I do not think it is a moral thing for you to do." Mr Lewis made the comments about the Chancellor's decision to increase student loan repayments.

Ms Reeves has frozen the the amount graduates need to earn before they need to start repaying their loans for three years. It means the threshold will start to fall in real terms from April 2027, because of the impact of inflation. As a result, more people will become eligible to repay the loans, and repayments will be higher.

But Mr Lewis insisted this was unfair, in a direct appeal to the Chancellor. Interviewed by BBC Two's Newsnight, he looked into the camera and said: "Chancellor You know that you are doing this as fiscal drag, as if student loans were a tax.

"But it's not a tax. It's a contract that the government signed with young people who have not been getting any education on these loans.

"I do not think it is a moral thing for you to do, to be freezing the repayment threshold in his way.

"It's not like tax that we know is variable. You didn't say the terms are variable.

"This isn't right. Please have a rethink."

Ms Reeves announced in her Budget last year that the salary at which graduates must begin to repay their student debt will be frozen at £29,385 for three years, from April 2027. Graduates make payments of 9% of their salary above this level, until their loan, plus interest, is paid off.

The freeze applies to graduates who started courses in England and Wales between September 2012 and July 2023.

The National Union of Students says this means students who barely earn more than the National Living Wage could soon be forced to pay off loan debt. Loans are used partly to pay for university tuition fees, and when these were first introduced they were presented as a way of making graduates share the cost of higher education courses that would give them above-average salaries.

Currently almost £21 billion per year is loaned to around 1.5 million higher education students in England. The value of outstanding loans at the end of March 2025 reached £267 billion. The Government forecasts the value of outstanding loans to reach around £500 billion by the late-2040s.

The average debt among borrowers who finished their course in 2024 was £53,000 when they first became liable to repay this debt.

Freezing the threshold will means graduates will pay an extra £90 million each year in total by 2030/31.

Questioned in Parliament about the loans policy, Education Minister Josh MacAlister said: "It is important that we have a sustainable student finance system, fair to students and the taxpayer. We will continue to keep the terms of the system under review to ensure this remains the case."